OKLAHOMA CITY, Aug. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Elephant Talk Communications Corp. (NYSE MKT: ETAK) ("Elephant Talk" or the "Company"), a global provider of Software Defined Network Architecture (ET Software DNA® 2.0) platforms and cyber security solutions, today announced total revenue of approximately $6.9 million and record margins* of 88% for the second quarter of 2014. Adjusted EBITDA increased to approximately $553,000 for the quarter.

Mr. Steven van der Velden, Chairman and CEO of Elephant Talk, stated, "We are pleased with the continued increase in our monthly recurring mobile and security revenue which drove sequential growth in our Adjusted EBITDA to approximately $553,000 compared to a negative $949,000 in the second quarter of 2013. We now have over 2.6 million SIMs on our platforms and expect our Adjusted EBITDA to continue to grow as we layer additional SIMs onto our platforms. We are currently on track with the Iusacell migration, working to transition the entire SIM database from old legacy systems in Mexico onto our platform. Our Software DNA® virtualized platform continues to deliver impressive performance and reliability, capabilities that will also become more visible throughout the industry based on our recent global sales collaboration with HP. Together with HP's Integrated Home Subscriber Server technology, we are driving the message that Mobile Network Operators no longer have to be held captive to their legacy infrastructure systems."

Recent Company Highlights:

Announced a sales collaboration agreement with HP focused on global sales opportunities for MNOs and MVNOs. The agreement will advance Elephant Talk ET Software DNA® virtualized platform along with HP's Integrated Home Subscriber Server as a key enabling technology for MNOs looking to realize up to 80% of their cost cutting objectives through the adoption of Software Defined Networking technology.

Activity at Vodafone in Spain continues to increase including the installation of a new subscriber services test platform awarded to Elephant Talk last month.

Zain Saudi Arabia continues to make steady progress on its newly launched Matrix brand, which is hosted on the Elephant Talk platform and has successfully added SIMs to the Elephant Talk platform. Zain expects to launch other new brands by the fourth quarter of 2014.

Europrise has just awarded ValidSoft an unprecedented fourth data privacy seal for its Zero Latency Correlation process. Zero Latency Correlation enables ValidSoft to securely extract 'Device Trust' data directly from a device application, in place of, or in conjunction with, data from the mobile network operator.

ValidSoft has successfully completed the development and production stage of its 'User Authentication' solution, employing its proprietary voice biometric technology. A number of 'proof of concept' trials of the new solution are underway, both direct and in conjunction with channel partners, in the financial services and enterprise sectors.

ValidSoft has completed the simplification of its product portfolio and market messaging and, in support of a more focused go-to-market approach and commercialization strategy, it has commenced the development of a robust partner channel and pipeline-building program.

Recent Financial Highlights:

2014 second quarter revenue totaled approximately $6.9 million, as compared to approximately $5.0 million for the second quarter of 2013, or an increase of approximately 38%.

Sequentially, mobile and security revenue in the second quarter of 2014 increased approximately 9% to approximately $6.9 million.

The 2014 second quarter margins grew to a record 88% compared to 85% reported in the first quarter of 2014 and approximately 71% reported in the second quarter of 2013.

Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2014 was $552,940 compared to a loss of $949,095 for the second quarter of 2013. For the first half year 2014 Adjusted EBITDA was $ 844,946 compared to a loss of $ 2,397,936 for the first half year of 2013.

Sequentially Adjusted EBITDA increased 89% to $552,940 compared to $292,006 for the first quarter of 2014.

Mobile and Security (Unaudited) Reported Revenue

Quarter

($ in millions)

(%) of Total

Company Revenue

2Q12

2.8

39.3

3Q12

2.9

43.9

4Q12

3.6

52.1

1Q13

3.9

58.5

2Q13

4.5

89.5

3Q13

5.0

95.9

4Q13

5.9

97.6

1Q14

6.4

98.5

2Q14

6.9

99.4

Quarter

*Total Margin($ in millions)

% of Total Quarter

(Unaudited)

Company Revenue

2Q12

1.9

26.8

3Q12

2.1

31.3

4Q12

2.7

39.4

1Q13

3.0

46.2

2Q13

3.5

70.7

3Q13

4.1

79.2

4Q13

5.0

82.5

1Q14

5.5

84.8

2Q14

6.1

88.0

* Non-GAAP financial measuresTo supplement the consolidated financial statements presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, Elephant Talk uses measures of non-GAAP: Adjusted EBITDA and margin. Margin is derived from the statement of operations and comprehensive loss by subtracting cost of service from revenues. These adjustments to the Company's GAAP results are made with the intent of providing both management and stockholders with a more complete understanding of the Company's underlying operational results, trends and performance.

Non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA is defined as earnings before income and expenses from derivative accounting, such as warrant liabilities and conversion feature expensing, interest income and expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, amortization of deferred financing cost, impairments, non-operating income and expenses and stock-based compensation to, among other things, show a measure of the Company's operating performance.

Management uses these non-GAAP measures to evaluate the Company's financial results, develop budgets, manage expenditures and determine employee compensation. The presentation of additional information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, net income (loss) or net income (loss) per share determined in accordance with GAAP.

The table at the end of this press release includes a reconciliation of net loss to non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA for the three and six months ended June 30th 2013 and 2014, respectively.

All interested in participating should dial in approximately 5 to 10 minutes prior to the 11:00 a.m. ET conference call. Participants should ask for the Elephant Talk 2014 second quarter conference call.

About ValidSoft UK Limited:ValidSoft, a subsidiary of Elephant Talk Communications Corp., secures transactions using personal authentication and device assurance. We help our customers to reduce fraud losses and improve customers' experience. As part of our multi-factor authentication, ValidSoft integrates its leading Voice Biometric engine into multivendor solutions or as a standalone system. ValidSoft serves multiple clients in the financial, government and business automation sectors and is the only company to have been granted three European Privacy Seals, reflecting its commitment to promoting strong data privacy. Visit: www.validsoft.com.

Forward-Looking Statements:Certain statements contained herein constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements may include, without limitation, statements with respect to Elephant Talk's plans and objectives, projections, expectations and intentions. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about Elephant Talk's industry, management's beliefs and certain assumptions made by management. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict, including, without limitation, the ability of the Company to regain compliance with the listing standards of the NYSE MKT LLC. Because such statements involve risks and uncertainties, the actual results and performance of Elephant Talk may differ materially from the results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Given these uncertainties, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise required by law, Elephant Talk also disclaims any obligation to update its view of any such risks or uncertainties or to announce publicly the result of any revisions to the forward-looking statements made here. Additional information concerning certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested in Elephant Talk's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), copies of which are available from the SEC or may be obtained upon request from Elephant Talk.

In order to provide investors additional information regarding our financial results, the Company is disclosing Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure. The Company employs Adjusted EBITDA, defined as earnings before income and expenses from derivative accounting, such as warrant liabilities and conversion feature expensing, interest income and expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, amortization of deferred financing cost, impairments, non-operating income and expenses and stock-based compensation to, among other things, show a measure of the Company's operating performance. The Company uses Adjusted EBITDA because it removes the impact of items not directly resulting from the Company's core operations, thus allowing the Company to better assess whether the elements of the Company's growth strategy are yielding the desired results. Accordingly, the Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA provides useful information for investors and others and allows them to better understand and evaluate the Company's operating results.

Without a clear strategy for cost control and an architecture designed with cloud services in mind, costs and operational performance can quickly get out of control. To avoid multiple architectural redesigns requires extensive thought and planning. Boundary (now part of BMC) launched a new public-facing multi-tenant high resolution monitoring service on Amazon AWS two years ago, facing challenges and learning best practices in the early days of the new service.
In his session at 19th Cloud Exp...

"We build IoT infrastructure products - when you have to integrate different devices, different systems and cloud you have to build an application to do that but we eliminate the need to build an application. Our products can integrate any device, any system, any cloud regardless of protocol," explained Peter Jung, Chief Product Officer at Pulzze Systems, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

The cloud promises new levels of agility and cost-savings for Big Data, data warehousing and analytics. But it’s challenging to understand all the options – from IaaS and PaaS to newer services like HaaS (Hadoop as a Service) and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service). In her session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Hannah Smalltree, a director at Cazena, provided an educational overview of emerging “as-a-service” options for Big Data in the cloud. This is critical background for IT and data professionals...

Internet of @ThingsExpo has announced today that Chris Matthieu has been named tech chair of Internet of @ThingsExpo 2017 New York
The 7th Internet of @ThingsExpo will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Chris Matthieu is the co-founder and CTO of Octoblu, a revolutionary real-time IoT platform recently acquired by Citrix. Octoblu connects things, systems, people and clouds to a global mesh network allowing users to automate and control design flo...

You are moving to the Cloud. The question is not if, it’s when. Now that your competitors are in the cloud and lapping you, your “when” better hurry up and get here. But saying and doing are two different things.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Robert Reeves, CTO of Datical, explained how DevOps can be your onramp to the cloud. By adopting simple, platform independent DevOps strategies, you can accelerate your move to the cloud.
Spoiler Alert: He also makes sure you don’t...

President Obama recently announced the launch of a new national awareness campaign to "encourage more Americans to move beyond passwords – adding an extra layer of security like a fingerprint or codes sent to your cellphone." The shift from single passwords to multi-factor authentication couldn’t be timelier or more strategic. This session will focus on why passwords alone are no longer effective, and why the time to act is now.
In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Chris Webber, security strateg...

"We are an all-flash array storage provider but our focus has been on VM-aware storage specifically for virtualized applications," stated Dhiraj Sehgal of Tintri in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 19th Cloud Expo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

Redis is not only the fastest database, but it has become the most popular among the new wave of applications running in containers. Redis speeds up just about every data interaction between your users or operational systems.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Dave Nielsen, Developer Relations at Redis Labs, shared the functions and data structures used to solve everyday use cases that are driving Redis' popularity.

The WebRTC Summit New York, to be held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, announces that its Call for Papers is now open. Topics include all aspects of improving IT delivery by eliminating waste through automated business models leveraging cloud technologies. WebRTC Summit is co-located with 20th International Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo. WebRTC is the future of browser-to-browser communications, and continues to make inroads into the traditional, difficult, plug-in web co...

Enterprise IT has been in the era of Hybrid Cloud for some time now. But it seems most conversations about Hybrid are focused on integrating AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google ECM into existing on-premises systems. Where is all the Private Cloud? What do technology providers need to do to make their offerings more compelling? How should enterprise IT executives and buyers define their focus, needs, and roadmap, and communicate that clearly to the providers?

Amazon has gradually rolled out parts of its IoT offerings, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to optimizing their backend AWS offerings, Amazon is laying the ground work to be a major force in IoT - especially in the connected home and office.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Kocher, founder and managing director of Grey Heron, explained how Amazon is extending its reach to become a major force in IoT by building on its dominant cloud IoT platform, its Dash Button strat...

"We are a custom software development, engineering firm. We specialize in cloud applications from helping customers that have on-premise applications migrating to the cloud, to helping customers design brand new apps in the cloud. And we specialize in mobile apps," explained Peter Di Stefano, Vice President of Marketing at Impiger Technologies, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 19th Cloud Expo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

Complete Internet of Things (IoT) embedded device security is not just about the device but involves the entire product’s identity, data and control integrity, and services traversing the cloud. A device can no longer be looked at as an island; it is a part of a system. In fact, given the cross-domain interactions enabled by IoT it could be a part of many systems. Also, depending on where the device is deployed, for example, in the office building versus a factory floor or oil field, security ha...

In addition to all the benefits, IoT is also bringing new kind of customer experience challenges - cars that unlock themselves, thermostats turning houses into saunas and baby video monitors broadcasting over the internet. This list can only increase because while IoT services should be intuitive and simple to use, the delivery ecosystem is a myriad of potential problems as IoT explodes complexity. So finding a performance issue is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

The idea of comparing data in motion (at the sensor level) to data at rest (in a Big Data server warehouse) with predictive analytics in the cloud is very appealing to the industrial IoT sector. The problem Big Data vendors have, however, is access to that data in motion at the sensor location.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Scott Allen, CMO of FreeWave, discussed how as IoT is increasingly adopted by industrial markets, there is going to be an increased demand for sensor data from the outermos...

"Qosmos has launched L7Viewer, a network traffic analysis tool, so it analyzes all the traffic between the virtual machine and the data center and the virtual machine and the external world," stated Sebastien Synold, Product Line Manager at Qosmos, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 19th Cloud Expo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

Between 2005 and 2020, data volumes will grow by a factor of 300 – enough data to stack CDs from the earth to the moon 162 times. This has come to be known as the ‘big data’ phenomenon. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to handling, storing and analyzing data aren’t adequate at this scale: they’re too costly, slow and physically cumbersome to keep up. Fortunately, in response a new breed of technology has emerged that is cheaper, faster and more scalable. Yet, in meeting these new needs they...

When it comes to cloud computing, the ability to turn massive amounts of compute cores on and off on demand sounds attractive to IT staff, who need to manage peaks and valleys in user activity. With cloud bursting, the majority of the data can stay on premises while tapping into compute from public cloud providers, reducing risk and minimizing need to move large files.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Scott Jeschonek, Director of Product Management at Avere Systems, discussed the IT and busin...

Data is the fuel that drives the machine learning algorithmic engines and ultimately provides the business value.
In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Ed Featherston, director/senior enterprise architect at Collaborative Consulting, will discuss the key considerations around quality, volume, timeliness, and pedigree that must be dealt with in order to properly fuel that engine.

More and more companies are looking to microservices as an architectural pattern for breaking apart applications into more manageable pieces so that agile teams can deliver new features quicker and more effectively. What this pattern has done more than anything to date is spark organizational transformations, setting the foundation for future application development. In practice, however, there are a number of considerations to make that go beyond simply “build, ship, and run,” which changes how...

The holiday season is nearly upon us (I’ve already heard Christmas songs being played…really?) and retailers are usually the big winners during the holiday season. However, leading retailers are already thinking beyond the current holiday season, and not just from marketing and merchandising perspectives. These leading retailers are considering how this holiday season – and the resulting wealth of customer, product and operational data – can be converted into new analytic insights that can be used to optimize key business processes, uncover new monetization opportunities and create a more comp...

I was on a high-rise construction site 34-floors above the city. I was talking to the construction crew when a fight broke out. There was an explosion and the floor collapsed. I removed the virtual reality (VR) goggles and laughed. It was so real. The VR solutions provided an incredible experience, almost like being there. As good as my experience was, it was not reality. It was a controlled pre-programmed experience - a notional idea. Today, however, VR and sensor technologies enable a notional idea to become reality – a Real-Reality.

The cloud promises new levels of agility and cost-savings for Big Data, data warehousing and analytics. But it’s challenging to understand all the options – from IaaS and PaaS to newer services like HaaS (Hadoop as a Service) and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service). In her session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Hannah Smalltree, a director at Cazena, provided an educational overview of emerging “as-a-service” options for Big Data in the cloud. This is critical background for IT and data professionals, as experts estimate that “as-a-service” cloud sourcing will increase from today’s 15% to 35% by 20...

Internet of @ThingsExpo has announced today that Chris Matthieu has been named tech chair of Internet of @ThingsExpo 2017 New York
The 7th Internet of @ThingsExpo will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Chris Matthieu is the co-founder and CTO of Octoblu, a revolutionary real-time IoT platform recently acquired by Citrix. Octoblu connects things, systems, people and clouds to a global mesh network allowing users to automate and control design flows, processes and sensor data, and analyze/react to real-time events and messages as well as big dat...

As we enter the final week before the 19th International Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo in Santa Clara, CA, it's time for me to reflect on six big topics that will be important during the show. Hybrid Cloud: This general-purpose term seems to provide a comfort zone for many enterprise IT managers. It sounds reassuring to be able to work with one of the major public-cloud providers like AWS or Microsoft Azure while still maintaining an on-site presence.

When was the last time you’ve ever heard anyone say “IT Applications & Operations”? Frankly, in my 30+ year career in IT, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone use this term. The typical term we hear is IT Infrastructure & Operations. These two go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly, which tells us a lot about how we view the field of IT. For those that may not be familiar with the role of IT Operations, Joe Hertvik does a great job here of describing IT Operations Management as someone engaged in the role of providing this service to the business. As you can see it’s very interesting how ...

Multiple agencies across the U.S. government are paying closer attention to the software they are buying. More specifically, they want to know what open source and third party components were used to build the software applications. The report notes:
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to know what open source components are being used in medical devices.

Enterprise IT has been in the era of Hybrid Cloud for some time now. But it seems most conversations about Hybrid are focused on integrating AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google ECM into existing on-premises systems. Where is all the Private Cloud? What do technology providers need to do to make their offerings more compelling? How should enterprise IT executives and buyers define their focus, needs, and roadmap, and communicate that clearly to the providers?

2016 brought about more cyberattacks than we thought possible, especially involving ransomware, and we definitely won't see that trend breaking stride in 2017. By next year, we expect every single adult in the US will know a blood relative that has had their identity stolen - the Internal Revenue Service reported that 2.7 million people had their identities stolen in 2014 and according to TransUnion, 19 people fall victim to identity theft every minute.

In his general session at 19th Cloud Expo, Manish Dixit, VP of Product and Engineering at Dice, discussed how Dice leverages data insights and tools to help both tech professionals and recruiters better understand how skills relate to each other and which skills are in high demand using interactive visualizations and salary indicator tools to maximize earning potential.
Manish Dixit is VP of Product and Engineering at Dice. As the leader of the Product, Engineering and Data Sciences team at Dice, he takes a metrics-driven approach to management. His experience in building and managing high ...

For large enterprise organizations, it can be next-to-impossible to identify attacks and act to mitigate them in good time. That’s one of the reasons executives often discover security breaches when an external researcher — or worse, a journalist — gets in touch to ask why hundreds of millions of logins for their company’s services are freely available on hacker forums.
The huge volume of incoming connections, the heterogeneity of services, and the desire to avoid false positives leave enterprise security teams in a difficult spot. Finding potential security breaches is like finding a tiny ne...

Monitoring of Docker environments is challenging. Why? Because each container typically runs a single process, has its own environment, utilizes virtual networks, or has various methods of managing storage. Traditional monitoring solutions take metrics from each server and applications they run. These servers and applications running on them are typically very static, with very long uptimes. Docker deployments are different: a set of containers may run many applications, all sharing the resources of one or more underlying hosts. It's not uncommon for Docker servers to run thousands of short-te...

Logs are continuous digital records of events generated by all components of your software stack – and they’re everywhere – your networks, servers, applications, containers and cloud infrastructure just to name a few. The data logs provide are like an X-ray for your IT infrastructure. Without logs, this lack of visibility creates operational challenges for managing modern applications that drive today’s digital businesses.

The 20th International Cloud Expo has announced that its Call for Papers is open. Cloud Expo, to be held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, brings together Cloud Computing, Big Data, Internet of Things, DevOps, Containers, Microservices and WebRTC to one location.
With cloud computing driving a higher percentage of enterprise IT budgets every year, it becomes increasingly important to plant your flag in this fast-expanding business opportunity. Submit your speaking proposal today!

Modern organizations typically use several IT tools to monitor their applications, networks and other IT components in real time. Unfortunately, this leads to independent data islands, which creates a one-dimensional view of IT. In order to make strategic decisions, organizations need an IT operational analytics tool to analyze data from multiple sources, spot trends and make better decisions.

Dec. 8, 2016 03:00 PM EST Reads: 1,191

About SDN Journal

SDN covers the use of software to create networks that can be reconfigured quickly and centrally without the need for any costly or time-consuming adjustment of individual routers and switches.

Cloud computing budgets worldwide are reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and no organization can survive long without some sort of cloud migration strategy. Each month brings new announcements, use cases, and success stories.